Slow and painful were the steps which capital and labour had to make before they could emerge, even in part, from this feeble and degraded state. But that they have made a wonderful advance in five hundred years will not be difficult to show. It may assist us in this view if we compare the Colchester of the nineteenth century with the Colchester of the fourteenth, in a few particulars. In the reign of Edward III. Colchester numbered 359 houses of mud, without chimneys, and with latticed windows. In the reign of Queen Victoria, according to the census of 1851, it has 4145 inhabited houses, containing a population of 19,443 males and females. The houses of the better class, those rented at ten pounds a year and upwards, are commonly built of brick, and slated or tiled; secured against wind and weather; with glazed windows and with chimneys; and generally well ventilated. The worst of these houses are supplied, as fixtures, with a great number of conveniences, such as grates, and cupboards, and fastenings. To many of such houses gardens are attached, wherein are raised vegetables and fruits that kings could not command two centuries ago. Houses such as these are composed of several rooms--not of one room only, where the people are compelled to eat and sleep and perform every office, perhaps in company with pigs and cattle--but of a kitchen, and often a parlour, and several bedrooms. These rooms are furnished with tables, and chairs, and beds, and cooking-utensils. There is ordinarily, too, something for ornament and something for instruction;--a piece or two of china, silver spoons, books, and not unfrequently a watch or clock. The useful pottery is abundant and of really elegant forms and colours; drinking-vessels of glass are universal. The inhabitants are not scantily supplied with clothes. The females are decently dressed, having a constant change of linen, and gowns of various patterns and degrees of fineness. Some, even of the humbler classes, are not thought to exceed the proper appearance of their station if they wear silk. The men have decent working habits, strong shoes and hats, and a respectable suit for Sundays, of cloth often as good as is worn by the highest in the land. Every one is clean; for no house above the few hovels which still deform the country is without soap and bowls for washing, and it is the business of the females to take care that the linen of the family is constantly washed. The children, very generally, receive instruction in some public establishment; and when the labour of the day is over, the father thinks the time unprofitably spent unless he burns a candle to enable him to read a book or the newspaper. The food which is ordinarily consumed is of the best quality. Wheaten bread is no longer confined to the rich; animal food is not necessarily salted, and salt meat is used principally as a variety; vegetables of many sorts are plenteous in every market, and these by a succession of care are brought